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In the midseventies, Steve Martin exploded onto the comedy scene. By
1978 he was the biggest concert draw in the history of stand-up. In 1981
he quit forever. This book is, in his own words, the story of "why I
did stand-up and why I walked away."

Emmy and Grammy Award winner, author of the acclaimed New York Times bestsellers Shopgirl and The Pleasure of My Company, and a regular contributor to The New Yorker,
Martin has always been awriter. His memoir of his years in stand-up is
candid, spectacularly amusing, and beautifully written.

At age
ten Martin started his career at Disneyland, selling guidebooks in the
newly opened theme park. In the decade that followed, he worked in the
Disney magic shop and the Bird Cage Theatre at Knott's Berry Farm,
performing his first magic/comedy act a dozen times a week. The story of
these years, during which he practiced and honed his craft, is moving
and revelatory. The dedication to excellence and innovation is formed at
an astonishingly early age and never wavers or wanes.

Martin
illuminates the sacrifice, discipline, and originality that made him an
icon and informs his work to this day. To be this good, to perform so
frequently, was isolating and lonely. It took Martin decades to
reconnect with his parents and sister, and he tells that story with
great tenderness. Martin also paints a portrait of his times -- the era
of free love and protests against the war in Vietnam, the heady
irreverence of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in the late sixties, and the transformative new voice of Saturday Night Live in the seventies.

Throughout the text, Martin has placed photographs, many never seen before. Born Standing Up
is a superb testament to the sheer tenacity, focus, and daring of one
of the greatest and most iconoclastic comedians of all time.

Now in paperback, the New York Times bestselling memoir from
Portia de Rossi explores the truth of her long battle to overcome
anorexia and bulimia—“an unusually fresh and engrossing memoir of both
Hollywood and modern womanhood” ( Los Angeles Times, 5 stars).

In
this groundbreaking memoir, Portia de Rossi reveals the pain and
illness that haunted her for decades, from the time she was a
twelve-year-old girl working as a model in Australia, through her early
rise to fame as a cast member of the hit television show Ally McBeal
. All the while terrified that the truth of her sexuality would be
exposed in the tabloids, Portia alternately starved herself and binged,
putting her life in danger and concealing from herself and everyone
around her the seriousness of her illness.

She describes the
elaborate rituals around food that came to dominate hours of every day
and explores the pivotal moments of her childhood that set her on the
road to illness. She reveals the heartache and fear that accompany a
life lived in the closet, a sense of isolation that was only magnified
by her unrelenting desire to be ever thinner, ever more in control of
her body and the number of calories she consumed and spent.

From
her lowest point, Portia began the painful climb back to a life of
health and honesty, falling in love and marrying Ellen DeGeneres and
emerging as an outspoken and articulate advocate for gay rights and
women’s health issues. In this remarkable and landmark book, she has
given the world a story that inspires hope and nourishes the spirit.